Hello, I have not updated this blog in a very long time. Please enjoy this short story I wrote in 2004 which I came across last month while going through some stuff on a very, very old laptop. I think I was reading quite a lot of Chuck Palahniuk at the time. I do not know why it is formatted like this.
Breathing Easy
The reason you use Florez when you hunt reavers is because they’re
blind but have knockout hearing. Modern tracking equipment is
reliable, but makes that constant whirring computer noise. The kind
you have to listen real close for, but it’s there, and if you’re
around computers a lot you probably don’t even hear it anymore. With a
tracker you see the reaver as a red blip on your HUD and not the
monster itself, and sometimes the red blip has a rough time telling
you how far away a reaver is or how fast it’s moving or whether it’s
above or below you, or if it’s spotted you yet. Some folks like to
hunt by their HUD alone, but that’s only because these people are
destined to be reaver snacks and just don’t know it yet.
Reaver hunters that don’t use Florez are a mean bunch. A mean,
grizzled, battle-hardened, completely stupid idiotic foolhardy bunch.
They dart in with their clunky HUDs and their clicking trackers and
their heavy four-second Kessers, and they either get lucky or they get
dead. The reason these kinds of moronic mushbrain hunters even still
exist is because the lucky ones are shameless braggarts and the dead
ones get digested.
So the smart reaver hunters use Florez. The reason you use Florez is
because the reavers can’t see it. A marble-sized ball of Florez can be
smushed between thumb and forefinger in less than a second;
noiselessly, effortlessly. Use it in a current and it turns everything
around you into a bright ghostly blue, including reavers.
The reason you need Florez to see reavers, or a counterproductive
tracker-and-HUD setup, is because reavers camouflage themselves so
well they might as well be invisible. You can see their eyes all
right, since they’re huge and burning red with charcoal black
pupils… but since reavers can’t see anyway they usually have their
eyes stitched shut or gouged out or something. They can’t see you, you
can’t see them. I suppose they consider it to be a fairly even
trade-off.
And it’s really really weird the first time you do it, because when
you or one of your allies is coated in Florez you can tell the stuff
is corporeal but transluscent. So every hair on their head, every
stitch of their clothing, every scale on their tail is still in full
view, just with this blue shell around it, kind of like they’ve been
shrink wrapped. But a reaver, you just see the shell. You just see
this blue monster figure, you see the creepy empty claws, you see the
flailing cellophane tentacles and the gnashing neon teeth.
And then you kill it.
Because for a change, you can see it but it can’t see you.
Harpoon guns are still popular in some circles. Some of the old timers
even still use Bosches. But the next gen of hunters all use
Florez-powered sidearms. Sidearms don’t pack a punch but are
rapid-fire and small enough to fit in a handbag. And instead of heated
plasma like the bigger three- and four-second Kessers, which will
build up inside the ammo reserves and cause meltdowns if you’re a slob
and don’t clean it regularly, the sidearms fire needle-thin bursts of
Florez. Nice and cold. Don’t show up on heat imagery.
You pop one ball of Florez into your sidearm and you get about six
thousand shots. At three hundred shots per second that means you need
to reload every twenty seconds. If you unload twenty seconds worth of
Florez into a reaver and it isn’t dead, reloading is the last thing
you need to be worried about. Worry about who is going to be giving
your eulogy instead.
When you pump a reaver so full of Florez that it dies, it lights up
like a bright blue blinding lump. You know it’s dead because it stops
moving. The camo loses consistancy at the exact second of death but
you still can’t see it because there’s so much Florez in its system
that the stuff isn’t transluscent anymore. The brilliant blue shell
takes a couple of hours to dissolve, and when it does, bam; dead
reaver. Ugly monstrous lobster-slash-octopus thing that has thousands
of needlepoint wounds all over its ugly shiny carapace.
When you nail a reaver with a four-second Kesser, the superheated
plasma flash-boils on impact and explodes into a cloud of steam. By
the time the steam clears enough to where there’s anything to see, you
realize there’s nothing left to see. Incinerated. If you don’t nail a
reaver with your four-second Kesser, it has four seconds to make you
die, and Neptune knows it only needs two.
When you manage to hit a reaver with a harpoon gun, it just makes them
mad. So you only have a split second to get creative.
These days, if you’re real about hunting reavers, it’s all about
Florez.
This one day the three of us get tipped off to a newly laid nest of
reaver eggs. That means mama reaver is around somewhere scouting new
food sources for her brood. All too often, food for reavers means
merpeople. Merpeople means us, and that’s why we need hunters.
The captain’s name is Paris and he’s in charge of the Florez. Florez
is expensive so we only take three balls of it with us. One to mark
the prey, and one for each sidearm. We only need two sidearms because
Paris uses a three-second Kesser, the same Kesser his father used back
when he was a hunter. The Kesser’s name is Backup Plan, and between
the three of us, we’re so good Paris has only needed to fire it once.
Paris is a military guy, and his motto is the heavier the artillery
the better. He’s not so stupid as to rely on his huge cannonball
Kesser while hunting down reavers of course, but he’s always keeping
up with the cutting edge of military technology. This is why he was
into Florez before most folks even knew what Florez was.
Paris said, he signed up for the service right at the end of the
Cestano War, so he’s never really seen action. Paris said, they
trained him to kill things for two rock-solid years then told him
there wasn’t anything left for him to kill. So Paris said, he took his
two years of military pay, showed them his fins, and got into the
private sector. In another year he had enough black market military
ties to hook him up with all the firepower he needs to take down the
baddest reavers in the ocean.
And Paris said, he does this because he wants to kill things. Paris
says this, but you don’t believe him because he doesn’t seem like the
kind of guy who wants to kill anyone. He’s just this sweet guy with a
great big heart and an insatiable zest for slaughter. And the one time
he did have to use his Kesser was because my sidearm locked and spat a
cloud of Florez into my face. Paris, he fires this pulsating orb of
plasma into this pathetic reaver, savors the explosion, licks his
lips, and says “Yeah baby.”
The kid’s name is Jean, and he’s only fifteen but he’s good. To hear
Jean tell it, he got fed up with his parents one night so he stole his
dad’s Kesser and credit card and ditched out. Managed to evade social
services long enough to pick a fight with the wrong guy. To hear Jean
tell it, he was trying to rob this wirey looking thug because he had
his daddy’s gargantuan Kesser and this dude didn’t look to be packing
anything except a fat wallet. This was when Jean was maybe eight or
nine.
Long story short, Jean’s dad’s Kesser was flat out of charge and this
guy, this wirey nobody, calls him on it. So Jean pulls the trigger,
fires a blank, then gets flattened out by this guy. Out of nowhere
this guy, this lanky scrawny easy target guy, pulls a stone knife and
goes to town. Slices six of the scales straight off Jean’s tail with
one slash, kicking a cloud of inky blood into the water all around.
Jean gets pummeled. This hapless victim guy, he just beats on this
nine-year-old kid, steals his daddy’s Kesser, and makes off with
daddy’s credit card while leaving him for dead.
But Jean’s smart, so he plays the crybaby child card in the emergency
room, gets a free ticket home, spends a few months blabbing to
psychiatrists and sucking up to his folks, then just ditches home
again. This time though, he brings a set of cutlery with him, and
learns to fight with knives. These days, Jean carries a set of blades
with him that are just scary. Nasty looking toothy seratted knives,
solid razor-edge knives, stone, glass, coral. And it’s like I said,
he’s good. And that’s why Paris likes him.
Me, I’m a hunter because I do three things better than just about
anyone else; listen, feel and shoot. Me, I don’t need a tracker
because I can just shut up, close my eyes, and hear a reaver moving
about if one’s close. I don’t need a HUD because I can just calm down,
spread out my arms, feel the current, and know right where to bust my
Florez.
Me, I don’t need all 6000 shots because I know right where all three
of a reaver’s hearts are. One a fist below the neck, one just beneath
the crook of the left-front claw, and one right behind the ink sac at
the sprawling base of their tentacles. You hit this one last because
upon impact it ruptures and then it’s just this opaque cloud of ink
and it’s so black it makes the Florez glow impossible to see. You hit
this one first and you can’t see well enough to hit the other two.
Paris says if I were in the military I’d make about the best sniper in
the history of snipers. Jean hears this and laughs because no military
operation in its right mind would take on a lady sniper.
Ladies apparently aren’t so funny when they’re reavers, though,
because Jean isn’t laughing now when I tell him that mama’s somewhere
close by, below us, just off to our left. Dead silence. Nobody talks,
nobody blinks hard. You make a sound, the reaver knows you’re there.
I roll our tracking Florez around in my hand. The thing is cold like
ice, and glowing bright and spectral. I wait for Paris’ nod. I squeeze
the Florez and send particles of neon light floating across the subtle
currents toward the reaver, and suddenly there it is, blue and glowing
and horrible, and it has no idea we’re here.
Reavers don’t live so deep as merpeople do. A biologist could tell you
why easier than I could, but long story short it has something to do
with their chemical makeup. They actually need the pollutants you find
nearer to the surface pumping through their foul bloodstream to
survive. But see, this is right in the sweet spot of depth where most
major mining operations are found, and thus someone has to go up there
and deal with the reavers.
Something else a biologist could tell you is that reavers as a species
are all the bipeds’ fault. Unlike decent civilized folk, these bipeds
don’t have laws against genetic engineering, so you see, it isn’t
enough that they pour poisons into our oceans that kill our fish and
pollute our mines and murder our hair, but they made these reavers for
some unfathomable purpose and left us to clean up their mess.
I’m not a biologist though, so I can’t get into the specifics on
hyperevolution or cancerous mutations or a reaver’s complete immunity
to natural selection. All I know is they’re here, now, and it’s my job
to kill as many of them as I can before my time’s up.
So when you have my job, and you get a tip that there’s a whole mess
of reaver eggs in some backpath three kilometers deep in some mine or
another, you go there and hit the problem right at its root.
Quick estimation, there’s about three hundred eggs in this nest,
tucked away in a crevace in the coral wall, and right now they’re
glowing bright burning blue because organic matter absorbs Florez like
plankton through a whale’s maw. The reason Florez is inconvenient in a
coral mine is because coral is organic too, so everything around you
is a neon blue sun, and the reaver kind of blends into the background.
This effect is much less effective than its regular camo though, so
you go in wearing eyeshades and you’re fine. Looking at the walls in a
Florezed coral mine through eyeshades is seeing everything in dull
twilight colors and faded outlines.
The reaver isn’t facing me, so I can’t kill it yet. But Jean sets to
work. Instead of laying eggs in big clumps, reaver eggs are long-ish
and arranged along slimy vomit-covered straps of flesh. The mother
deliberately tears these decayed strips of shark or octopus or
merperson and lays her eggs on them so the hatchlings have something
to feed on immediately after birth.
I’m not a biologist but I don’t have to be one to know that’s
absolutely disgusting.
However, this makes it easy to harvest reaver eggs. You just slice off
one of the strips at the base (wear gloves because sometimes they’re
caustic) and you have this whole string of eggs just ready to go. You
collect the eggs like this so you can boil them later. Rich merpeople
eat that garbage and pay big money for the privelage. But it’s extra
coin in our purses and it saves Florez, so we do it this way. It takes
some fancy knifework to get them all sometimes, and so Jean’s our guy.
The closer a reaver is to hatching when you boil the sucker alive in
its egg, the meatier the meal and the more you can sell it for. This
is the kind of little tip you pick up when you’re in my line of work
as long as I am.
There’s another reason for harvesting eggs, though; it gets mama’s
attention something quick. So while Paris loads up and readies Backup
Plan and Jean sets silently to work cutting reams of reaver eggs and
stashing them in his bag, mama reaver spins and starts in at us in
protection of her unborn babies.
And just as you squeeze off the trigger three times in rapid
succession, you think aww, that’s kind of touching.
And if you aimed right, instead of a fierce maniacal reaver rushing in
to the rescue of her hundreds of spawnlings, you’ve just got this big
dead opaque blue blob floating nearby a pile of uncooked hor d’ourves.
And if you aimed right, you’re now sitting in a quick-dispersing black
cloud of reaver ink.
You can eat the meat of a reaver too, and it’s actually pretty tasty,
but it’s packed so full of biped chemicals that it’s unhealthy. And
besides, if you’re using Florez the meat becomes absolutely toxic.
Harpooning a reaver for an evening’s meal is a story worthy of
reapeating to one’s grandchildren, if there’s enough of you left after
the fight to enjoy the fine zesty flavor.
Jean hasn’t used his sidearm, so it’s still armed, so I trade mine
with his and excuse myself. I say I’m going to scout the area quickly
to see if there are any more reavers in the area. I say, yeah, I think
there’s one in this shaft above us; I’ll go have a look.
Paris wants us all three to go, but I say it’s unnecessary. Besides,
it’s probably nothing. Just procedure. I’m anal like that, you know.
I’ve done this enough so that Paris and Jean know the drill. The three
of us are a team, but after a hunt we all go our separate ways. We
know how to contact each other. Paris does his thing as captains do,
sells off the eggs if we have any, collects our pay, splits it up
three ways. I don’t know what he does with his. Jean gambles his away
on orca races and shell games. Mine gets set aside so I can do all my
fickle prissy mermaid things with it later.
But I’m not scouting for reavers right now. I know damn well there
aren’t any more left, and I don’t rightly care if Paris or Jean think
I’m crazy. The thing is, I have to get to the surface. The thing is, I
have kleistopnoisis.
I’m not a biologist, but I know an awful lot about the respiratory
system. I have to. You learn all about that kind of thing when you
have a disease.
Go ahead; touch the gills at the base of your neck lightly. You’ll
notice they feel feathery; light, and ticklish. Unless you have
kleistopnoisis. Then they feel rough; scabby, hard. You can still
breathe through them, just barely. If you overexert yourself in any
way, you can’t breathe. You lock up.
Forget your dreams of being an all-star athlete.
Bipeds have a similar ailment called asthma. I know this because the
doctor that diagnosed me with kleisto knew it, and he knew it because
he’s a doctor and doctors have to know this kind of thing. A biped
with asthma isn’t really the same as a biped drowning; they can’t
breathe water any better than we can breathe rock. So it’s not a
matter of their lungs filling up with fluid; it’s the tube which
connects their lungs with the outside world that closes up on them and
cuts off their oxygen supply.
Yeah, laugh it up. It sounds really freakin’ funny until you meet
someone with kleisto yourself.
Kleistopnoitic gills are easily inflamed, and when that happens, they
contract. Water can’t flow through them when this happens, and so it
cuts off your oxygen supply. Just like that. Except whereas an
asthmatic biped can usually just breathe harder and suck in more
oxygen, a merperson can’t just have their gills work overtime.
Fortunately, merpeople have lungs too, these pathetic mostly worthless
flesh-balloons inside their chest. Kind of an evolutionary throwback.
So if you have a ready supply of pure oxygen, you can breathe through
your mouth just like any biped. This is why all hospitals have an
oxytank on hand.
My oxytank is leagues away in a closet at home, so for me, after this
hunt, it’s a race against time. I haven’t felt it yet; the
inflamation, the contracting, but I know it’s coming. Because it
happens every time. So I swim upwards, through the coral maze of this
mine, through the layer of sludge and chemicals and
Neptune-knows-what-else to the surface.
And I don’t have to tell you, all that oily gunk is just suicide for
your hair.
With a hundred meters to go, I feel it. The same intense panicked
feeling that has happened a dozen times before. Involuntarily I start
scratching at my neck, and just feel these throbbing rough flaps of
skin where my gills should be. I wonder if I’ll really make it this
time. I count the seconds as I watch the blotted moon get closer,
closer, bigger, bigger, less wavy and more defined…
And that first breath you suck in after breaking the surface, that’s
the most incredible feeling there is from the waves to the abyss.
For a few minutes it’s really painful. Merpeople have really pitiful
lung capacity, so it takes a handful of hard, sharp breaths before you
adjust to the open air. You’re working muscles that never get worked.
Your body has to catch up to you. Short, deep gulps of air are best.
If your life weren’t in terrible mortal danger right now, you’d marvel
at how bipeds do this unconsciously their entire lives.
The reason this always happens after a hunt is because there’s no
quicker way to kick your system into an overclocked kleisto attack
than to coat your gills in Florez.
So I lay here on the top of this coral reef, sea foam cresting over
me, my chest heaving, covered in Florez and biped-trash. My muscles
are burning from the frantic swim, my sidearm is still loaded just in
case, my hair is a wasteland, and I’m freezing cold because it’s so
windy.
It can take hours for the Florez to dissolve, and of course it never
really does. Long after the glow has subsided, you know there are
still a hundred thousand microscopic particles clinging onto you that
you’ll never really be able to wash off. And you know a handful of
those are stuck, forever, on your ailing kleistopnoitic gills. And you
know that someday they’ll clap shut, the mother of all kleisto
attacks, and never re-open, and when that day comes you’ll be wearing
an oxytank forever and your charmed life as the best lady sniper in
the sea is over – if you’re lucky. Most likely you’ll just suffocate
and die.
On the surface, sometimes it rains, and that’s refreshing. Sometimes
there’s nowhere to relax and you just have to make do with treading
water for as long as it takes. Sometimes you’re fortunate enough to
meet and swap gossip with a passing family of dolphins. Sometimes you
catch a glimpse of a biped transport off in the distance, either
sailing on the waves or sailing high up in the clouds. And you wonder
what it’d be like to unload six thousand shots at it, if it were only
in range.
Home is home. There’s no point attaching any sentiment to it. It’s a
place to eat and sleep and stash what’s yours.
It’s always a cautious, deliberate swim back from the surface, and I’m
always still a bit frazzled thanks to the whole ordeal. At this point
my gills are puffy and inflamed, but otherwise back in action. The way
my hair falls around my shoulders makes it difficult to see my neck,
so it isn’t obvious about the kleisto. This suits me just fine.
It’s a little after 1130, and the green message LED is flashing on my
prehistoric computer, so I know Paris made good with my share.
I glance at the mirror and look like hell. Now begins the process of
combing the oil and chemicals out of my hair, and scrubbing as much of
the Florez off of my skin and scales as I can. It’ll be a while before
my gills have calmed down enough to clean the gook out of there too,
so there’s some time to kill. I’m exhausted, but I don’t sleep. The
thought of falling asleep with all those Florez particles clutching
dormant to the inside of my gills scares me to death.
While I do this, I give a verbal command to my computer, which whirs
and clicks for a minute and chokes on a couple of orange data LEDs
before spitting out a credit card with my new account balance etched
into it. There’s a message from Paris too, great job, and enjoy the
easy money. Says he’ll get in touch tomorrow with another job, Neptune
willing. The card drops out of the data slot and onto the floor, where
it’ll sit until I’m ready to spend it tomorrow.
The LED is still blinking once Paris is through, so I shoot off
another command. This time it’s a stranger or, at least, someone I
don’t recognize right away. It’s a merman’s voice, muffled, scratchy.
He sounds bored, he sounds tired. But he sounds determined. Sometimes,
you can tell these things, even only with audio.
“This is Asa with IBI. I have reason to believe you have information
regarding an outstanding missing merperson case that’s recently been
re-opened. I need you to contact me as soon as is practical.”
The timestamp on this message from “Asa with IBI” is 1937 today. At
1937 this evening I was headed towards the coral mines with Paris and
Jean to strike it rich on a cache of reaver eggs. Considering IBI
precincts generally shut down at 1700, this must mean this Asa guy,
whoever he is, is putting in some long hours.
I know a little bit about IBI myself. This Asa guy, whoever he is,
didn’t mention my name; that must mean he doesn’t know it. Only my
anonymous contact information. This Asa guy, whoever he is, knows I’m
a hunter, though. Reaver hunts always take place in the evening, since
most reavers are nocturnal and so dusk is right about the time they’re
active enough to locate easily, but not so much that they’re terribly
alert. This Asa guy, whoever he is, deliberately contacted me when
chances were good I wouldn’t be home.
This Asa guy, whoever he is, wants information from me without
actually speaking to me. He wants me to have to call him back because
it’s illegal to record an audio conversation if you’re the one who
initiated it. When I talk to him, even before he says hello, I’ll hear
the soft little click of a recording device being flicked on.
He knows what I do but not who I am, which suggests he got my contact
info from another hunter, possibly a rival, possibly not. This is a
sticking point. I keep my identity as anonymous as possible, so it’s
difficult to trace me through just a computer address, but this is
supposedly IBI here, not just some idiot thugs. They ought to be able
to figure me out easier than that.
Unless of course “Asa with IBI” turns out to be just plain Asa. And
this is exactly the conclusion I draw. Takes a lot of guts to claim
you’re with IBI when you’re not.
I decide that “as soon as is practical” means “whenever I damn well
feel like it”, save a copy of the message, and dig out a bottle of
this stinging medical ointment stuff. This is an industrial strength
Florez solvent that burns terribly when applied to sensative areas
like your gills. Before I set to work swabbing the stuff on, I have to
hook myself up to an oxytank. I have this portable one which holds 700
liters of oxygen compressed to 2000 psi. I have to breathe with this
thing while cleaning my gills because when they’re all full of
irritating pink Florez-eating gunk, they’re just as useless as if they
were in the throes of a kleisto attack.
Still exhausted, swabbing this pink stuff onto the scabby flaps on my
neck, wincing in pain, sucking cold air through this oxytank which,
when empty, will cost a full hunt’s salary to refill. And I can only
figure the “missing merperson” Asa is interested in is Jean.
I meet up with Paris the next day because sometimes we meet up outside
of work. We’re what you’d call comrades when there are reavers about,
and we’re what you’d call friends when there aren’t. This is a
relationship based on convenience. Jean, we never see him until it’s
crunch time. This suits all three of us just fine. Truth is, we like
Jean because he’s useful. Truth is, neither Paris nor I care much for
his companionship.
Truth is, I need Jean around because if he weren’t and I were to have
an attack, Paris would be meat.
Paris says he’s milking his leads. Says reaver activity is on the
decline, which is awesome for the food chain but bad for business.
Officially we’re licensed as reaver hunters; we have to be. And
officially we don’t know Jean exists. Jean is fifteen; too young to
hunt bloodthirsty monsters. Paris lines everything up and we get Jean
to go along at the last minute. Jean needs the money so he’s always
willing to tag along. This suits all three of us just fine.
Paris and I are snagging some lunch in the market district when I
bring up Asa from IBI. The first thing he asks is if I think it’s
about Jean.
“I’m not connected with anyone else that would be considered missing,”
I tell him.
“Are you going to get back with this guy?”
“I don’t think so. I doubt he’s really with IBI.” And I tell Paris why
I think this.
“As I recall,” he says with one of his irritating nasal laughs, “you
have a contact or two in IBI yourself. Why not have this Asa looked
into?”
This thought had crossed my mind. I tell Paris I haven’t done this
because I haven’t determined whether or not the Asa thing is serious
enough to call in a favor.
“Who do you suppose tipped this joker off? He had to have gotten your
contact info from somewhere.”
I had given this some thought too. Hunters keep tabs on each other in
case we need to grudgingly call in help from unlikely places. It’s
embarassing, it’s expensive, but sometimes it’s necessary. So this Asa
guys shows up flashing Jean’s picture around, hoping for a bite. One
of the other hunters in the area knows a guy who knows the guy in the
picture. Asa follows up the lead, who tells him yeah, that’s Jean, he
hunts reavers with this mermaid who lives near the Rift. Then my
address. This is the theory I present to Paris.
“Not many hunters outside of us know Jean. Those that do wouldn’t sell
him out to IBI.”
Which of course is another red flag.
“Well I hope for Asa’s sake he doesn’t think to come sniffing around.
I’d hate to think he’d try to muscle you.” Paris sneers. “You still
packing that old Bosche at home?”
“Yeah but it hasn’t worked for years. I’ll get it refurbished one of
these days.” That’s a half-truth in any case. Thing about me is I’m a
gun nut, but can scarcely afford to nurture my hobby. Whenever I
accumulate a sizable bit of expendable income, it’s time to have my
oxytank replenished.
“I can check into it if you want. I’ve got real friends in IBI I can
call up, rather than just inside contacts.” He pauses a moment. The
kind of thoughtful pause that is uncharacteristic of Paris, which is
what makes it notable. “We’ll decide what our next move is after
that.”
We? Our?
I don’t say that to him. I just thank him instead. And tell him to let
me know when he’s got a job lined up, because I’m ready anytime.
That’s a half-truth too.
We split ways and it’s about 1500, and what I’m thinking is how nice
it would be to fire that old Bosche.
Paris is a better friend than I give him credit for. I don’t think he
means for this to be the case. He’s the kind of guy who offers help
without thinking about it, then secretly regrets the inconvenience,
but follows through anyway because he doesn’t want folks thinking he’s
a jerk. So, in that sense, he’s kind of a really nice helpful jerk. He
said he has friends in IBI and offered to look into this Asa thing,
but his reactions betrayed him. I could look in his eyes and tell he
regretted having said it even right as he was saying it. He’ll do it
for me, but he’ll wish he’d never brought it up.
I wonder sometimes if Paris sees me as anything but a hired gun. I
wonder sometimes if I’ve got him figured out as well as I think I do.
Maybe he’s keeping score. Maybe he’s going to start expecting me to
return these favors of his.
For the time being, the truth is neither of us probably has the other
mapped out. We’re friendly to each other, but wary of each other. And
probably, for now at least, this suits the two of us just fine.
I get home later that evening and my computer is totally dark. Asa has
not tried again to get in touch with me.
It’s two days later, and we are the three of us on our way to a job.
Our only conversation is an uncomfortable silence, which is to say
none at all. I do not want to be here right now. Too many things about
this job rub my scales the wrong way. I didn’t like it when Paris
pitched it to me, and I told him so. Our targets are three fully-grown
reavers and a nest of eggs which, as best we understand, may or may
not be hatched by now. Three reavers means one for each of us, so
today Paris has got a light Florez sidearm in addition to Backup Plan.
One for each of us means no room for error.
No room for error means no room for kleisto attacks.
Thanking Neptune for small favors, this trio of reavers has been
sighted near a ridge that’s within sight of the surface. Barring an
absolute catastrophy I’m not in any serious danger. The only thing I
can think of that qualifies as “absolute catastrophy” involves either
Paris or Jean screwing up during the hunt, and they have both of them
proven time and again that scenario is unlikely.
Still, three reavers at once…
When you have more than one adult reaver to light up, hitting that
third heart can be tricky. Taking out that third heart makes it
impossible to see for a few crucial moments, but taking out only the
first two isn’t enough to incapacitate the monster. Whatever sick
biped first cooked these aberrations up, he made extra special sure
they had a bunch of extra organs inside. You can practically blow a
reaver half up and still have enough of it left over to put an end to
you.
You can, however, cut down those two hearts and expect the reaver to
slow down – if only momentarily – due to system shock. For a few
seconds it won’t know if it’s dead or not. So when you have more than
one reaver on you the idea is to take out the two safe hearts in each
one, then coordinate the finishing shot with your teammates so all the
ink sacs are ruptured at about the same time. Then you sit and wait for
the black cloud to clear and pray none of you missed.
If you have more than one reaver on you and you’re fresh out of
teammates, the best you can hope for is to keep control of your weapon
long enough to fill your own skull up with Florez. This is at least a
painless death. Plus, all the Florez pumping through your veins and
seeping through your tissue is enough to poison any reaver that eats
you, so you might get lucky and take one of them with you.
The water here is oily and murky. We’re swimming up the side of this
cliff, this hilariously sharp dropoff at the end of this huge plateau.
This plateau used to be an island where bipeds lived back before the
floods, and it’s really creepy to see these shattered buildings and
abandoned roads, and to look around at lives that haven’t been lived
for a century. Some of these buildings are tall enough to still poke
their roofs out into the open sky as sickly islands of metal and
stone, rectangular and crumbling, a tribute to biped arrogance.
Reavers love this kind of place.
We’re not going into the ruins because that’d be suicide. Bet a blind
merman’s fins there are more than a hundred reavers populating this
sunken cemetery; we’re only after the three that have been skirting
around the edges, near the cliff face.
And just as we break even with the roof of the plateau, I stop
swimming.
This ball of Florez in my hand, I break it and suddenly everything
lights up blue. The neon glow catches the current and, as it turns
out, the joke is on us.
Barely before my brain can process the visual information of being
surrounded by five – not three, five – fully grown reavers, and
countless hatchlings, I feel this sharp pain in my back. This cold,
metallic pain, this bite, this horrible thin gnashing pinprick, and
it’s not more than a few more seconds that I can see and feel nothing
else. Everything clouds out, and the last sight I remember is the tips
of my fingers glowing blue – not from the Florez particles floating
about, but from the inside-out, just like the bones in my hand were
radioactive.
As the story goes, it was during a standard training excersise when a
young cadet named Desh had his first major kleisto attack. His kleisto
was well documented by military doctors of course; these things don’t
slip through your initial physical. Soldiers with kleisto are required
to have an oxytank onhand at all times, and Desh was no exception. But
this was a public attack, and Desh’s whole unit – superiors and peers
alike – saw him at his absolute weakest, sucking air thorugh his mask
and just looking pathetic.
Desh’s heart was in the right place. He was a huge merman, a crack
shot, and fiercely loyal to his companions. His muscles threatened to
bulge right out of his flesh. More often than not this Desh, this
gentle giant, would just power through his training leaving crowds of
jealous mermen in his wake. He made an art of pushing his physical
endurance to the absolute limit. He’d always pass with flying colors,
gold stars, high praise. The military didn’t work with Florez at the
time, so overexposure wasn’t a danger for him or his kleisto.
I’m learning this story about Desh while I’m laying in the middle of a
rotted delapidated husk of a room complete with moldy carpeting and
splintered unidentifiable furniture. This room, at one point, was a
biped dwelling on the twelve trillionth floor of a gravity-defiant
skyscraper. Now, it’s an island in its own right ever since the floods
tore through its surrounding city. There’s a storm outside, this swirl
of rain, and I can feel it when it comes stinging in through the
shattered wall-window. For the most part I’m dry, and I’m breathing
weakly with my lungs because I can feel my gills have choked up on me.
Then there was this one day, the story goes, where Desh had an attack
during the middle of some target practice. Since kleisto was going to
keep hiim out of any real field action, he was in training to be a
sniper. Nothing triggered this attack, it just hit him like a bolt of
lightning. Out on the gun range, a few hundred meters away from his
oxytank, he just doubled over and clutched his neck. It took almost
ten seconds before anyone realized what was happening.
I try to force my breathing into something less erratic and wheezy and
it’s like trying to force an ocean into a bottle. Making an attempt to
speak right now would be something like suicide. The soft blue glow is
gone; but still I feel awful. I can’t see anything but hazy swirls
when I look around, and I can’t hear anything beyond the throbbing in
my head. I don’t think I’m wounded but at the moment there’s no sense
in caring.
Desh was dragged by his startled comrades over to his tank while his
tank was being dragged towards him by a commanding officer who was
watching the exercise from afar. They met halfway, and they fumbled to
get the tank’s mask over Desh’s jaw. It locked into place, and
everyone around watched as Desh’s eyes got wide and he tried to take
his first breath.
But nobody had initialized the vacuum valves yet. The mask was still
full of water. And a few moments later, so were Desh’s lungs.
So story goes, this guy Desh never suffocated – he drowned. A drowned
merman is the ultimate irony.
I black out again, for Neptune knows how long.
My eyes open again, and the torrent outside is still in full fury. The
ocean knows I’m here and isn’t particularly happy about it. Waves are
hammering against the walls and the whole structure sways back and
forth, but I don’t feel unsafe. No, unsafe is not a word I’d use to
describe myself right now.
Then there’s the all-too-familiar touch of clammy stinging Florez
solvent around my gills, and after a few moments it starts to burn.
The pain is numbed but noticable; whether I’ve just build up a
resistance to the goop over time or whether I’ve been given
painkillers isn’t apparent. For a moment all I can think is that
here’s a process I’ve put myself through a hundred times, and how
weird it feels when it’s another pair of hands.
The pair of hands is attached to a voice, and the voice is Paris’. And
Paris is telling me about how in between Desh’s first attack and his
last one, there were about three dozen. Paris was Desh’s best friend
in the service, so he learned how to administer this solvent. His
fingers flicking back and forth across the skin of my neck, expertly,
carefully, it isn’t a feeling I’m unfond of.
“I wish you would have said something to me,” he says. His voice
sounds like a whisper amidst the screaming winds outside, where the
furious rain and ravaging waves sound like they want to break the
world in half. “If you’d have said something to me I would never have
let you work around all this Florez.”
And I still don’t dare try to speak; my breathing is still too weak
and erratic, and I don’t feel like I’m getting enough oxygen as it is.
But without even answering him Paris knows what I’d say. And he
replies, “But you wouldn’t give any of it up anyway would you?”
My head is turned to the other side for me, and Paris starts working
on the other set of gills. My line of sight careens to a dark corner
of the room where Backup Plan is sitting. There are crystal-glass
fixtures on these Kessers where you can see into the bowels of the
gun, right into the plasma supply . Instead of a lit-up series of
clear blue or green or yellow crystals, however, all I can make out it
is a grey misshapen figure. Backup Plan has been fired recently, and
more than once.
Fired to save my life, probably.
“Someone tailed us to the job,” Paris says, his voice still greater
than the wind while remaining soft and soothing. “At least three of
them. They were sloppy. I don’t know if the Florez dart that hit your
back was meant for you or not. I think they might have just got jumpy
when you broke your neon.”
These Florez darts don’t pack the same punch as the sidearms we carry;
they’re used mainly as tranquilizers. The idea is there’s enough
Florez inside to knock out your system for a while but not kill you –
kind of an instant but temporary coma. This is of course a moot point
if you’ve got kleisto, since the Florez in your system will attack
your gills and suck you into a whole world of respiratory shutdown.
After that, Paris says, like three seconds after that, everything goes
ink-black. Jean shouts something about how one of the ink sacs was
ruptured prematurely. There was some screaming. Paris says, the best
he could do was to just aim Backup Plan at one of the blotted blue
shapes and hope for the best. Paris says, the only way you can tell if
you’re shooting at friend or foe depends on if you’re looking at
tentacles or a tail.
There were two former mermen floating nearby, half-chewed husks or
flesh and bone and scale. Everything was blood and ink and neon blue.
Everything was chaos. Paris’d fired Backup Plan three times, and when
the water started to clear there was Jean zooming off with a reaver
hot on his tail. And there was me, just hanging limp just outside the
current, sinking slowly. All around were the frayed remains of fresh
reaver hatchlings.
Paris says, had he never met a sniper-to-be named Desh while in the
service, he’d have never noticed my kleistopnoitic gills. He came over
to see if I was alright, if I’d been hurt, to pull the dart out of my
back… and noticed I wasn’t breathing. He said he brushed my hair all
over one shoulder and saw my gills belching Florez particles from both
inside and out, puckered and useless and inflamed.
He says he took me around the waist and swam to the surface as quickly
as he could, and let a wave carry the both of us into this empty room,
this ancient biped sarcophagus. He says it took a minute, but I
instinctively started to breathe on my own. Gasping at first, then
less, until my breaths were irregular but strong. I was unconscious,
but nonetheless putting my pathetic mermaid lungs into overtime.
That’s how he knew I’d had kleisto for a long time. Unlike Desh, who
had coped with maybe a few dozen attacks where there was always an
oxytank within reach, something in me knew not to open my lungs until
I was in the open air. Even asleep, something in me knew the water
would kill me.
It’s stupid of me, but out of all the questions I could risk my breath
on at this point the one I decide to ask is where Paris got a hold of
a jar of Florez solvent. And he smiles sadly, a sadness that’s so
unlike Paris that it makes me want to be sad too, and says, “After
Desh, I carry one all the time.”
Home is still nothing fantastic. Paris escorts me the whole way, a
strong look of sad worry about him that’s uncharacteristic of Paris.
He isn’t saying much. I tell him, really, I can breathe fine now, and
I’ll be okay, and I’m used to this sort of thing.
My place near the Rift is small and dumpy, but it fits the budget
nicely and, besides, who needs all the stress and heartache of city
life? Paris has never been here before, but the tour doesn’t take long
because it’s just a one-room place. Before leaving he insists on
triple-checking my oxytank, mentions something about finding a smaller
model to pack up for when I’m on the job. The more he drones on, the
more exhausted I get, and all I want to do is sleep.
I wake up and it’s 0520. Paris is nowhere around. It’s when I’m laying
there, groggy, half-awake in bed when I realize I must have nodded off
while he watched over me. It’s when I realize that’s all he wanted to
do all along, is stay with me until he was sure I was fine.
As of now, I can’t tell if he’s more worried about his friend or his
combat buddy. Right now I can’t tell if he’s friends with me or my gun.
I’m still tired, and my bones ache. My body is a limp, restless kind
of tired where my arms and tail won’t move but I know I won’t be
getting back to sleep. The kind of tired where all you do is lay there
in the dark with your thoughts.
The whole way back, Paris didn’t mention Jean. Not once. Or anything
else for that matter, except Desh and his kleisto.
It hurts to think about what that might mean.
Most of what I think about is trying to puzzle out what exactly
happened tonight. Someone set us up. Who? Someone was tailing us. Why?
Paris must have laid me down after I fell asleep. He must have done
this gently because I’m the type who’ll wake up at the slightest
disturbence.
I try to shake thoughts like that and re-focus. Paris probably got
this job when some less experienced team of hunters turned it down,
which means someone besides us knew about it. This kind of thing
happens sometimes. The idea is, you sweep in behind some hunters, take
’em out while they’re recouping from the job, then swim back
victoriously with their spoils. The truth is, I’ve never done that but
I’ve considered doing so. The truth is, I feel incredibly foolish for
not trusting Paris with the truth about my condition sooner. The truth
is, he wants to take care of me and I want to let him.
I’m beginning to get really frusterated with my brain. What am I,
falling in love with this guy? This Paris guy who, when it comes right
down to it, I barely know? This guy who I’ve worked with a long time
but still can’t read properly? The abyss with that. I need to focus. I
need to puzzle this out.
Reason and logic, not emotion. Rationality, not fantasy. Paris told me
there were two bodies nearby, mangled and chewed pretty bad. He said
there had to have been at least three persuers, since they would have
wanted to at least match us. He said they had to have been
inexperienced, otherwise they wouldn’t have shot me so soon. He told
me a long story about an old friend of his, an old military buddy
named Desh. Must’ve been painful for him. He had to choke it out. He
had to dredge up a memory he thought he had buried.
I realize my eyes are closed. When your eyes are closed and you want
to sleep but can’t, you start to lose touch with reality. You’re awake
and you’re aware you’re awake, but what’s real kind of phases out and
you’re left in mental limbo. I curse myself for not thanking Paris
tonight. I hate myself for not asking if Jean is okay. I loathe the
idea of another hunter out there, at least one, who has it out for me
and mine.
I regret not having been awake for that short moment when Paris’ arms
were around me, carrying me towards the surface, towards life. I
embarass myself by admitting I’d have enjoyed it.
Focus focus focus. But why bother? Every time you focus on one thing
you just lose sight of another. Every time you get it figured out it
all comes unraveled. Every time you tell a secret you leave yourself
vulnerable.
Every time you swim too fast or too long or too hard your gills lock
up and you die. Every time a friend’s nearby you might at least
survive.
Every time you trust a friend you just get hurt again. So why bother?
Little known fact is that you’ve got what’s called tear ducts at the
inside corner of each of your eyes. I’m not a biologist but I do know
that tear ducts are another kind of evolutionary throwback. What
happens is your eyes emit tiny droplets of fluid so they don’t dry
out. This happens every time you blink. This is inconsequential
underwater since your eyes are always saturated anyway. The job of the
tear ducts is to ensure that this fluid drains off into your nasal
passage without much ado.
Strong emotion can cause an such an overproduction of tears that the
ducts can’t keep up the pace. Tears start draining down your face
instead, over the bridge of your nose and down your upper lip. This
happens every time you cry. Most merpeople are never aware anything of
the sort is happening.
I know all this because of the countless times I’ve spent on rocks or
islands or just treading water, my sickly head poked out of the foam,
cold and lonely and nursing my kleisto. Seawater just causes your
tears to dissipate, to drift off in the currents. In the open air,
tears well up in your eyes, cloud your vision, soak your face.
Laying in my one-room flat by the Rift, and it’s 0540 now, and I’m
crying. I’m trained well enough that I can feel the tears in my eyes.
And the stupid thing is I put my hands to my face to wipe them away.
The stupid thing is, by now, this is a reflex.
Just before you’re pulled out of bed and dragged to the floor of your
embarassingly dumpy one-room flat, you have a split second of
consciousness with which to see the time display on your computer
click over to 0757. And your first thought, before you even realize
what is happening, is that you just want to roll over and go back to
sleep.
Except you can’t roll over, you can’t even move – a thug twice your
size has your arms wrenched behind your back with the unbreakable grip
of one massive hand, and is holding your face into the gritty sand of
your floor with the other. Real quick your brain processes what is
happening, decides that no, this is most assuredly not a dream, and
it’s then and only then that you realize, holy shit, I’m in some real
trouble here.
There are rummaging noises all around as whoever the second guy is
roots through all my meager posessions, throwing worthless baubles to
the floor and digging through all the accumulated crap in all my
drawers and shelves. He happens upon my old busted Bosche and says,
“Hey, we could sell this, mate.” But he throws that aside too, having
been given some visual clue by the first thug, the one perched on my
back pressing the bones in my wrists down into my spine.
Brain clicks on again; the first guy doesn’t want to say anything.
Doesn’t want me to hear his voice, because I’ve heard it. Doesn’t want
me to know that he’s just plain Asa – doesn’t want me to know that his
IBI ruse faceplanted. Doesn’t want to be identified.
I don’t struggle – I couldn’t win if I tried. I just lay there, my
mouth filling up with sand and my back burning with pain, and try to
calm myself. There are a few more crashes and whooshes and tears
before Number Two chirps, “It isn’t here, mate. We was lied to.”
Then there’s the lick of cold metal pressed to the back of your neck,
then darkness. Your eyes open again and your time display reads 1209.
And your first thought, before you even remember what had happened, is
that you just want to roll over and go back to sleep.
And when you roll over, you realize you’re not in bed. And you see all
your stuff strewn everywhere, and piece by piece you recall something
about two thugs ripping your flat apart looking for something and then
filling you with tranq.
Though heavy throbs of pain are smashing against the inside of my
skull, I force myself to place a com to Paris. I snatch the receiving
mic from my ancient computer and frantically punch in his address, and
listen to about six seconds of dead silence before I see that my mic
connection has been cut.
“Yeah? Hello?”
Damn it, I can’t respond.
“What’s this about, aye?”
He’ll notice my address, I tell myself. He’ll know it’s me.
“What the– is this some joke? Hey, are you okay?”
If he doesn’t I’m screwed, because I have no other way to contact
Paris. I have no idea where he lives or how to go about finding him.
Every single time we’ve gotten together it was he who got in touch
with me. Damn it all.
The receiver clatters to the floor as I force myself not to panic. I
hear Paris stammer something about coming over right away to check on
me, but his voice sounds like it’s fifty kilometers away. I can feel
something bad has happened – I know it somehow – and I’m powerless to
do anything.
There’s a soft click as Paris terminates the com and a whirring noise
as a credit card with my bill for the connection etches out of the
slot and clatters to the floor. All I can do now is sit and wait – and
beseech Neptune’s beard that my gut feeling is wrong.
An hour later now, and we’re waiting for Jean.
We’re in a public place. A cafe or a shopping center or a theater or
something, I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m too frazzled. I’m getting
emotional. It’s impossible to remain calm.
Paris arrived not twenty minutes after I contacted him, and quickly
surveyed the damage done to my flat. Okay, nothing major. That could
wait until later. He refused another word until he was certain I
wasn’t hurt, which I wasn’t… at least, not permenantly. The tranq
Asa (because by now, that’s who I assume it was) used wasn’t
Florez-based… if it were, I’d simply be dead right now.
After that we came here, and Paris placed a com through to Jean on a
public terminal telling the kid to meet us. It’s only now that Paris
tells me he isn’t sure if Jean’s alive. It’s only now that I learn the
last Paris saw of him was firing off with a reaver hot on his tail.
But what can we do? Just stay here and wait.
In the meantime, Paris tells me his friends at IBI didn’t turn
anything up on Asa. This doesn’t surprise me.
But he’s not telling me something, and this is one of the reasons I’m
so agitated. Paris is frightened by something. He knows something he
isn’t sharing. His IBI buddies clued him in and he’s purposely leaving
me in the dark.
Except, he’s not. He’s actually saying stuff, telling me everything,
and it’s just my stupid fault for not paying attention. Of course I
don’t even realize I’m not paying attention until Paris asks me, “Hey,
are you paying attention?” I had just convinced myself he was lying,
or holding back, or leading me on. Why had I done that? Why were my
expectations of Paris so low?
He says, “Jean is wanted by the IBI. That much I know.” He’s repeating
this. He’s talking in the slow, methodical way you talk to people when
you have to repeat yourself because they don’t listen properly. The
way you’d talk to a five-year-old. “Or more rightly, his father is.
There’s some bad mojo cooking here. Jean’s dad is part of an organized
crime syndicate that IBI has been trying to bust for years.”
That’s why Paris is frightened. His hunting partner turns out to be
the son of a notorious gangster. Terrific.
So Jean’s dad is just looking for his kid? Trying to get him back
home? That’s what I figure anyway. But Paris says no, that isn’t the
case. He says, the guys who tailed us last night were hired goons
masquereding as reaver hunters to try to make our untimely demise look
like some sort of on-the-job accident. He says whatever Jean’s dad
wants with Jean, it ends with Jean dead.
Father of the freaking year.
“This is all just coming to light now that I’ve checked with my guys
in IBI. If it weren’t for this guy Asa contacting you, we’d have never
found this out,” Paris says. We’re both looking over our shoulders
pretty consistantly now. “So I’m trying to find Jean. Damn it, I don’t
even know if he’s alive.”
And I know this sounds really cold, but I tell Paris that if he isn’t,
well case closed. That’s it, right? Whether it’s a reaver or a hired
goon or Asa or whoever, dead is dead. If Jean got planted, we’re in
the clear.
“Not exactly. Because now Asa figures you or I know something or have
something. That Jean confided in us. Now we’re liabilities.”
Which raises the question of what they were searching for in my kip
last night. And neither of us have an answer. We’re both hoping Jean
has one. So we’re both hoping Jean’s alive. If he is we at least have
a shot at knowing what we’re wrapped up in.
When we get our answer, it’s pretty much the most horrible news in the
world.
A waiter or usher or bouncer or something, just one of the guys that
works here answering coms and dealing with customers, swims up and
asks, “Are you Paris? You have a com from a fellow named Jean.” Paris
signs the com bill and we both go over to the terminal. I can’t hear
what’s said because public com terminals have these little earpieces
so your business isn’t broadcast across the whole ocean. But at the
same time I know exactly what’s said because the look on Paris’ face
is just awful.
“Okay,” he says. “We’re coming. No weapons. No oxytank. Look, I swear.
Just don’t–” and then that’s it. The little LCD on the terminal
clicks off, indicating the other party has disconnected. A credit card
prints out for Paris. And every part of me goes ice cold.
Where we’re wanted is a place near the Rift. Not “near the Rift” as in
where my flat is, though; we’re talking “near the Rift” as in “near
the scary wilderness next to an unimaginably deep dropoff”. Because
there’s the Rift, which is the name for a poor part of the suburbs
where folks like me live, that just happens to be closer to the abyss
than anyone else cares to live, and there’s the Rift, which is a
straight vertical shot into the deepest, coldest part of the world.
Jean is there. Neptune’s golden trident, Jean is there. I don’t even
want to remember what he looked like right at that moment. There was a
cloud of black swarming around him that was his blood. One of his eyes
was swollen shut. A huge chunk of his fin was completely torn off. His
left arm was twisted into a completely unrealistic angle. The way Jean
looks here is the way that makes you want to go ballistic and rip the
arms off anyone who would do this to anyone. Not like a maternal
instinct, exactly – more of an animal instinct. The kind of thing
inside you that riles against sick, twisted individuals who…
…speaking of sick, twisted individuals. Asa is here. I know it’s Asa
because I recognize his voice. He’s not from IBI. Even if I hadn’t
figured this out yet, I’d know it this instant: Asa’s got two merman
thugs, both armed with Kessers, guarding over Jean.
“First off, you ought to apologize,” said Asa, narrowing his eyes into
daggers. “You never returned my coms. That isn’t very polite.” I tried
to respond with something but there was a lump in my throat that I
couldn’t swallow. So I didn’t do or say anything.
“Second off, you ought to thank me. Your little friend here went
claw-to-fin with a reaver. If I hadn’t come along at just the right
time he’d have been meat. But, I digress.”
Asa swims over to me carefully. I throw a desperate look at Paris; he
looks like he wants to do something but can’t figure out what to do.
Anything either of us does right now is a bad move. So again, I don’t
do or say anything.
“You,” Asa says to me, “you are supposed to have a gun. A Florez gun
like this one.” And he produces a Florez gun, just a small sidearm,
several models better than the one I use. I’m a total gun nut, and
even though I can’t afford to collect I still keep up with the
literature. And I’ve never seen anything like this. Asa reads this in
my eyes. “Haven’t seen one like this, have you? Okay then. Go ahead
and play stupid. We’ll all just play stupid.”
It’s now I realize that Jean is awake. Conscious, just barely. “I told
you… she doesn’t have it,” he says. “I lied to you before. I got rid
of the thing, really. I threw it away. It’s gone. I swear…”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe that for a second, kid,” says Asa, now
swinging this futuristic-looking sidearm around wildly. “You know what
your dad told me? He told me to take care of you no matter what, but
to tie up these loose ends first. Unfortunately for me that means I
can’t exactly threaten you, since you’re about to die anyway. But…”
Several more goons appear. Five or six; they came out of nowhere.
Paris and I put up a short show of struggle, but it’s no use. We were
trapped ever since we came out here. I don’t even know now exactly
what the hell we expected to do. Asa approaches me with his weird gun,
and he places it right to my neck, just below my right gill. “Leave
her alone, Asa!” Paris cries. This is uncharacteristic of Paris, but I
don’t have time right now to think about what that might mean.
“Hey Jean,” Asa says. “I bet you didn’t know your girlfriend here is
kleistopnoitic, did you? It’s true; we found an oxytank in her flat
when we tore it apart looking for that gun last night.” Jean looks
horrified. Dammit. “Yep. So while this baby can fire up to five
hundred fifty sparks of Florez per second, it’ll only take one
straight in her gill to kill her.”
Now Asa turns to Paris. “You were in Cestano, weren’t you? Well not in
action of course. You’re too young for that. I’ll tell you how it was
then. I was in a special ops team designed to bring down biped
vessels. We had huge shoulder-mounted cannonball Bosches, so no
problem. The best part was watching them drown. They got all frantic
as their brain went vertigo, and they desperately would claw around
trying to reach the surface. Most time they’d be swimming the wrong
direction.” Pause for effect, two, three, four. “Inevitably, though,
they all tried to breathe the water. Flooded their lungs, and
drowned. It’s really quite a sight.”
Asa cocks the gun and places the barrel flush with my gill. I can’t
even writhe out of the way because these thugs that have grabbed me
are pushing my head to one side, baring the entirety of my neck. “And
if you don’t tell me – the truth this time – about where that gun is,
you’re going to see it happen to her.”
“Damn it Jean, tell him!” screeches Paris. “Tell him and end this!”
Except Jean really doesn’t know. He originally told them I had this
gun – this murder weapon thing, this piece of incriminating evidence
Jean swiped from his dad and now is wanted back. But as it turns out
he really did get rid of it. Wherever the thing is, it’s long gone
now, and Asa is having none of it.
“Alright,” says Asa, and pulls the trigger.
Bipeds need to ingest a good deal of water just to survive. Which
means even with the danger of drowning constantly looming over their
heads, they’ve formed a habit of taking a quantity of water and
willingly pouring it down their throats. Sometimes you have to wonder
how they do it.
I hold my breath as long as I can, which isn’t long. Everything gets
blurry before I black halfway out. A hundred kilometers away I can
hear Paris screaming and Jean crying out in pain. A trillion
kilometers away I can hear Paris’ old buddy Desh taking his last
frantic breath, filling his lungs with water…
Every muscle in my body goes limp. There’s enough Florez in my gill
now to lock it up forever. The left one still works, so I’m not dead.
Asa knows that. I wonder if Paris and Jean do. He hopes the sight of
me blacking out due to lack of oxygen is enough to make Jean talk;
hey, at least there will be a brain damaged drooling husk of a lady
sniper to take care of afterwards.
I feel myself move for a moment, and can’t resist. Paris is absolutely
frantic. Oh, okay. That’s why. I’m being dragged to the dropoff of the
Rift. They’re going to let go, and I’ll sink forever. Forever and
ever, until I finally fall asleep for the last time. How tragic. How
utterly, deliciously tragic.
And Jean shouts something and Paris shouts something, and something
else happens and then something else. And I’m sinking. Falling. And
everything is a swirl of color and the way I feel is just very sleepy.
My eyes get heavier and heavier, until they refuse to stay open any
longer.
My coma lasted for four months. That’s what kindly Dr. So-and-so says.
I only learn after the fact how everything happened. It was Jean who
saved us. In the end, it was the little sadistic kid with the knives
to saved my life.
Jean had a knife hidden on him the whole time. A tiny one, about the
width of his pinky finger. He always wore it; it attaches to the soft
flesh of his tail where, years ago, some psycho tore the scales away.
Reconstructive surgery allowed Jean to wear several fake scales there
and underneath those scales is an ideal place to hide a small knife.
Of course Asa searched him, but there’s no way he could have known.
Apparently, right after they let go of me, they let go of Jean. They
wanted me to die leaving Jean behind knowing he had a chance to save
me. Of course in his completely busted up condition there’s no
possible way he could have done so; I was sinking faster than he could
swim with a broken arm and a mangled tail. So instead, with his good
arm, he grabbed for his secret knife, shot forward, and buried it in
Asa’s alarmed head.
Asa, being dead at that moment and all, let the sidearm he was holding
drop out of his hand. Jean managed to grab it before anyone else
could, and even though he could barely see he screamed for the big
guys grappled onto Paris to let him go – or else. In a situation like
that you don’t hang around to find out what “or else” means, you just
do whatever the abyss the guy with the gun wants you to do.
Paris dives after me and, just as he does so, shots start going off.
The entire area was lit up with blue Florez, and after Paris manages
to grab hold of me and rise back towards the surface he realizes
there’s no way Jean made it out alive. He says there was just a sad
little collection of corpses there by the Rift – one stabbed not-IBI
agent, several Florez-injected thugs, and Jean.
Jean gave up his life for us. To save us.
Which sounds pretty amazing really. Not quite as amazing as the fact
that we were out there in the first place, though. We were prepared to
give our lives for Jean too. As it turns out, we were the three of us
much better friends than any of us thought.
It took a minute or two to get me breathing once Paris got me to the
surface. He says he was afraid I never would. My right gill was
totally shot, completely useless now. A direct shot of Florez
transformed it into a useless scab on my neck. Paris had no choice but
to leave me laying on this sandbar, barely alive, while he swam all
the way back to my place to get my oxytank. He told me he can’t even
describe how relieved he was to find I was still there when he got
back.
Then I was brought to the hospital. With surgery they managed to get
bits and pieces of my right gill working again. They managed to finish
the job Jean started and keep me alive. But I didn’t wake up for four
months. I guess my brain figured I needed a vacation.
I learned all this the first day I was awake. The night prior, though,
I didn’t know anything. The split second after finally coming to, I
was scared and angry and very, very sad all at once. I didn’t see the
point to any of this, to Asa, to Jean… the doctors learned I was
first awake because I was calling out Paris’ name in a loud, clear
voice. I can only manage a voice like that now if I’m hooked up to a
respirator.
So the next day, that morning, before I learn about Jean’s death or
the fantastic save or any of that… before I learn about all the
medication I’ll have to take and the mandatory respiration machine
I’ll have to wear and how there’s a new social disability service that
will pay for it… before I go home and fix up my old Bosche and fire
it for the first time in forever…
…before any of that, the door to my hospital room opens, and Paris
is there. And I put my arms around him, and feel the tears building up
in my eyes. This time, though, I don’t wipe them away. I don’t have
to. Paris does it for me.
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